Precise infusion of large volumes of liquid medicament through an administration line is usually accomplished by an infusion pump. Traditional infusion pumps make use of a flexible infusion bag suspended above the patient. For many medicaments and drugs, a pharmacist, nurse, doctor, or other medical professional is required to prepare the infusion bag by reconstituting, diluting, or mixing the medicament or drug in preparation for its delivery and use with a pump. Such methods are cumbersome, imprecise, require many time-consuming steps by medical professionals, are susceptible to medication errors, and require bed confinement of the patient. Mixing and administration of solid state drugs—whether lyophilized powders, crystalline structures, or some other solid state—and solution state drugs is time consuming and involves a large number of complicated steps.
Other problems exist with conventional pumps. Periodic monitoring of the apparatus by a nurse, doctor, or other medical professional is required to detect malfunctions of the infusion pump. Accordingly, over the years, infusion pumps developed into increasingly more complex devices of great expense and sophistication. Such devices include a large number of features, options, and programmability possibilities. While those capabilities can be advantageous in providing a range of customization to medicament administration, they also lead to use error, and the possibility of patient harm, injury, or death.
Complicated infusion pumps also typically require many time-consuming steps for setup, including applying both the medicament reservoir and the administration line to the pump. Increased preparation requirements increase the risk of contaminating the pump, the medicament reservoir, the administration line, or other elements of the intravenous line system, posing a hazard to the patient. With mixed drug administration systems (such as reconstituted or diluted drug administration systems), there is also an increased risk that the drug or diluent into which the drug is diluted will be contaminated, mis-measured, or otherwise incorrectly prepared, leading to patient harm. An improved system for providing a convenient, reliable, accurate, and sterile infusion of large volumes of mixed drugs is needed.